In the history
of the Church it’s not often that a private book is published by a reigning
pope, but Vatican II popes apparently started a trend. John XXIII published a
couple of books; Paul VI doubled that; John Paul II doubled Paul VI, and now
Benedict XVI has almost doubled John Paul II, and in half the time. Prior to
Vatican II hardly any pope wrote a private book on theology. I’m not sure of
the reason for this trend. I am more concerned with the fact that it tends to
foster what E. Michael Jones calls the “I/We dichotomy” which “demeans the
papacy by allowing the pope to become a celebrity” for the purpose of
“establishing the bounds of permissible discourse according to a political
agenda …”[i]
In other words, what cannot be said officially because of ecclesiastical
constraints is said unofficially in order to achieve a desired result. Paul VI
apparently saw another side to this potential duplicity when he said: “Is it
really right for someone to present himself again and again in that way and
allow oneself to be regarded as a star?”[ii]
Perhaps this same temptation also hampered our first pope. It was Pope Peter in
Galatians 2:11-21 who, when he decided to engage in some private and unofficial
commentary on the Gospel under the name Cephas, eventually shunned his Gentile
converts and instead bent over backwards to placate the hostile and unbelieving
Jews, upon which he was severely upbraided by Paul for “perverting the Gospel.”
This is an ever-present danger for a pope when he is wearing the papal tiara;
how much more when he dons a hat with the title “private theologian”? As we
shall see, it may be no coincidence that the Jews who made the Cephas-side of
Pope Peter stumble in proclaiming the Gospel are eerily similar to the Jews
today who are making the Joseph Ratzinger side of Pope Benedict XVI stumble as
well. It’s uncanny to see such a resemblance between the first century and the
twenty-first century. In light of the dire warnings from our saints; the Fatima
message; and Scriptures that speak about the rise of antichrist, who will now
win this battle on earth between the popes and the Jews remains to be seen.

Be that as it
may, when the pope writes a book that is disseminated all over the world and
refers to the author as “Pope Benedict XVI,” and which carries an emblem of the
papal seal embossed on the hardcover edition, is this to be considered an “I”
book written by Joseph Ratzinger or a “We” book written by Pope Benedict XVI?
As Jones says, this question is especially significant when, for example, the pope
addressed the use of condoms and gave the wrong answer in his private book Light of
the World: The Pope, The Church and the Signs of the Times. Perhaps for
the book Jesus of Nazareth the issue
is much simpler because there the pope explicitly states that it “is precisely
not a book of the Magisterium. It is not a book that I wrote with my authority
as Pope…. I very intentionally wanted the book to be, not an act of the
Magisterium, but an effort to participate in the scholarly discussion,”[iii]
adding that “everyone is free, then, to contradict me.” Fair enough. But I
don’t think the masses see it that way. If the pope says or writes something,
it is like Gospel, regardless if he temporarily assumes the alias “Joseph
Ratzinger.” Popes need to be very careful with the impressions they create.
Benedict XVI must realize he is no longer Joseph Ratzinger and he cannot go
back there, at least not without confusing the rest of Catholicism. He is the
pope, the vicar of Christ, the head-honcho, and the whole world hangs on his
every word; and that, whether he likes it or not, will remain the case until he
dies. The days of Joseph Ratzinger and his speculative theology are over; and
it is very dangerous for Benedict XVI to try to revive them. If he is going to
speak on an issue as sensitive and important as condoms then he must only speak
from his magisterial chair.

The job of each
Catholic is to protect the papacy and Joseph Ratzinger is no exception to that
mandate. He cannot put the papacy in precarious positions and exploit it for
future book sales. The Church has had enough opinions from the prelature. It is
time for hard and fast decisions about what the Church is and what it meant by
what it officially stated, especially what it “officially” stated at Vatican
II. Wouldn’t it be nice if the pope, after 50 years of turmoil created in the
wake of Vatican II, actually wrote an official document with the express
purpose of clearing up the inordinate amount of ambiguities in the major
documents of Vatican II? THAT would be something to get excited about! But
another book, like Jesus of Nazareth,
which spends 300 pages delving into the finer points of historical criticism
and arguing about which of the four Gospel writers got his facts right, we need
like we need vinegar on our teeth.

Now, in
reviewing Jesus of Nazareth it became
apparent to me why Joseph Ratzinger, regardless of his apparent love of
Scripture, must cease taking center stage under the name Pope Benedict XVI. The
basic reason is, Jesus of Nazareth,
although very uplifting and insightful in several places, contains a disturbing
amount of dubious theological propositions; lack of scholarly exegesis; misuse
of biblical criticism; and a general ignoring of Catholic tradition. The
problem is exacerbated in that I wouldn’t expect most college professors to be
able to sort out the problems in Jesus of
Nazareth, much less would I expect the Catholic masses to do so. The
latter, as I noted above, will take Jesus
of Nazareth as Gospel, and that is precisely what frightens me the most.

In light of the
dichotomy the book makes between Joseph Ratzinger and Pope Benedict XVI, I
simply do not know which one to refer to when I address him. There are enough
theological problems in the book that I hesitate to attribute them to Pope
Benedict, but then again, Joseph Ratzinger no longer exists, ecclesiastically
speaking. So I have decided to refer to the book only by its title, which I
will form into a handy acronym called JON, and I will refer to JON as a he instead
of an it.

WHAT? NO LONGER PREACH TO THE JEWS?

Let’s start with
the furor JON has created over the issue of the Jews and their salvation. On
page 44, JON presents himself in quite an audacious manner when he claims to
possess a better understanding of Jewish issues than everyone else before him,
and more or less corrals the entire Catholic tradition as being an assortment
of “many misunderstandings with grave consequences.” JON puts nothing less than
20 centuries of Catholic tradition on the chopping block, but that is not
unusual for post-Vatican II popes. John Paul II did it constantly. It seems
they have a need to silence the haunting voices of the past in order to give
credence to their continuing novelties. Subsequently, JON sees his own “reflections”
as “the beginnings of a correct understanding [which] have always been there
waiting to be rediscovered.” Obviously, this implies that JON (and perhaps his
immediate predecessors since Vatican II) have been the only ones who have
“rediscovered” these truths – truths that the 260 popes and prelates before
them, who were apparently not guided by the Holy Spirit or refused to listen to
Him, did not see. Since he has brought down the gauntlet, JON cannot very well
appeal to these pre-Vatican II popes and prelates for support; so he instead
goes to one famous personage of the past that agrees with him. Apparently
finding no one in the first millennium, JON goes to the second millennium to
find the French abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153). JON extracts a single
quote from Bernard addressing Pope Eugene III, which states: “Granted, with
regard to the Jews, time excuses you; for them a determined point in time has
been fixed, which cannot be anticipated. The full number of the Gentiles must
come in first …Why did it seem good to the Fathers … to suspend the word of
faith while unbelief was obdurate?” and then backs this up with a quote from an
obscure modern day abbess living in Germany named Hildegard Brem, who is
commandeered as the sole authoritative commentary on Bernard’s words. As such
Brem states: “In the light of Romans 11:25, the Church must not concern herself
with the conversion of the Jews, since she must wait for the time fixed for
this by God, ‘until the full number of the Gentiles come in’… On the contrary,
the Jews themselves are a living homily to which the Church must draw
attention, since they call to mind the Lord’s suffering” (p. 45).

So there we have it. An obscure nun from Germany who neither claims any
private revelation from God nor notable scholarly career produces such an
astounding and provocative ecclesiastical and eschatological commentary;
someone who has never been cited by any scholar previously, or even heard of by
the public before she appeared in JON’s book, is the single source JON uses to
convince the reader that his new understanding of not preaching to the Jews is
the “correct understanding [which] has always been there waiting to be
rediscovered.” What was JON thinking? I am truly at a loss to explain how such
shoddy scholarship could come from someone who was at one time the head of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Irrespective of
the careless scholarship, let’s examine the claims as they stand. Bernard says
“it seemed good to the [Church] Fathers … to suspend the word of faith while
[Jewish] belief was obdurate.” Did they? Which Fathers does Bernard have in
view? Unfortunately, JON doesn’t delineate any, but that is certainly his
responsibility if he is going to put Bernard on the hot seat. I don’t know of
any Fathers who taught such a thing and JON gives us no names of any such
Fathers in his remaining 250 pages. So we have the right to ask: why didn’t JON
investigate the claims of Bernard before he chose to give us this supposed
“correct understanding”? Not only are there no Fathers who teach JON’s view,
there are no councils, no saints, no popes and no doctors who taught that the
Gospel should no longer be preached to the Jews (save, apparently, for Bernard
of Clairvaux, which is not exactly a consensus from tradition). There is a
simple reason why. Regardless of how difficult it may be to preach to the Jews,
not preaching to them is much worse, for it automatically consigns them to an
ignominious fate that we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy, much less on the
former chosen people of God who come from the loins of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob.

In short, JON’s
compassion is misplaced. Catering to the pressure of the Jewish lobby today by
postponing their salvation until tomorrow is not being sympathetic to them at
all. The mess of political pottage JON will receive from the Jews in return for
handing over our Gospel birthright can only come back to haunt him, if not
destroy him. Naturally, today’s Zionists are quite happy to allow the pope to
think that God wants to exclude them, as a race, from Christian preaching. They
are overjoyed to finally see that, from henceforth, Christians will put the
onus on God to make a token gesture of Christian salvation to the last
generation of Jews. The Jews themselves couldn’t have thought up a better
script to keep Christians off their proverbial backs, and they are laughing all
the way to the bank.

JON more or less
confirms our suspicions when he says: “In the meantime, Israel retains its own
mission. Israel is in the hands of God, who will save it ‘as a whole’ at the
proper time when the number of Gentiles is compete” (p. 46). What mission? Who
gave it to them? Where is this written? Where did the Church ever teach this
before? Since when is it God’s responsibility to preach to the Jews? Does this
imply that God will take away their free will and zap the whole generation with
salvation? If so, where does Scripture teach such a thing? Unfortunately, JON
doesn’t even think of these questions, much less offer an answer to curious
minds.

ANOTHER LOOK AT ROMANS 11:25-27

As we can also
see, the thrust of JON’s thesis is based on an exclusive yet untested
interpretation of Romans 11:25. On the one hand, even if it were true that
Romans 11:25 teaches that God will save the Jews at or near the return of
Christ, that exegetical scenario can have no basis for whether we preach the
Gospel to them now. If St. Paul believed that the last generation of Jews were
going to be saved en masse near the
end of time and that it would be futile to preach the Gospel to them now, why
did he say he wanted to save them now, in the very same chapter: “if somehow I
might move to jealousy my fellow-countrymen [Jews] and save some of them” (Rm
11:14)? Or why, in the same chapter, did he tell us about the distinction
between Israel at large who rejects the Gospel but, to this very day, “there is
a remnant chosen according to God’s grace” being saved by the preaching of the
Gospel in Paul’s time and in our time (Rom 11:5)? Or why, in the same chapter,
did Paul say the Jews can and will be saved in the Gentile age: “And they
[Jews] also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in; for
God is able to graft them in again” (Rom 11:23)?

We grant that
most Jews do not turn to God and Christ, but Paul clarifies in the very same
chapter, verses 1-11, that we should not be surprised by their obstinacy, since
it started in the Old Testament! (cf.
Rom 11:1-11; 9:27-33: 10:16-21; Heb 3:7-11:4:2-5; Acts 13:44-52; 1Thess
2:14-16; Rev. 2:9; 3:9). The Jews have always been stiffnecked toward God.
That’s precisely why God rejected them (Ex 32:9; Acts 7:51). No new revelation
there. But in the face of all this testimony, where does Scripture, or our
Tradition or Magisterium, teach that the Jews obstinacy is a sufficient cause
to cease preaching to them? In fact, Scripture teaches that we are to preach
the Gospel to everyone regardless whether we think they will listen, since the
Gospel is both the “aroma of death to death and to the other an aroma from life
to life” (2 Cor 2:15-16). In other words, the Gospel both saves and damns, and
it is not our business to decide who should hear it (cf. Heb 4:12-13; Jer. 1:7-10; Isa 55:11).

On the other
hand, although it should have no bearing on whether we preach the Gospel to the
Jews today, we should also question the exclusive interpretation that JON is
giving to Romans 11:25-27, since it seems to be the sole basis for his
unprecedented and destructive approach to the Jews. In these verses Paul says: “a
hardening has come upon Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles
comes in, and thus all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The deliverer
will come out of Zion, he will turn away godlessness from Jacob; and this is my
covenant with them when I take away their sins.’”

Now, it is
certainly within the realm of interpretive possibilities that Paul is pointing
to a time after the Gentiles are saved in which the last generation of Jews
will be saved at or near Christ’s return. Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria and Chrysostom
held a similar view.[iv] But is this
certain or even likely? Where else does Scripture teach such a scenario? Has
this interpretation been thoroughly examined so that every word and phrase has
been parsed and exegeted? Are there other viable interpretations for this
passage that are not being considered? The truth is, many pro-Jewish
interpreters, most of them premillennial Protestants, have commandeered Rom.
11:25-27 to teach their eschatological view of a future en masse conversion of Jews, but no Catholic, past or present, that
I am aware of has ever demonstrated it by a thorough exegesis, including
Bernard of Clairvaux and Hildegard Brem. JON certainly doesn’t provide any
exegesis. He just assumes his interpretation is correct and/or infallible.

Interestingly enough, in the
one place “the times of the Gentiles” appears outside of Rom 11:25, namely,
Luke 21:24, JON admits, according to Jesus’ own words, that it is followed
immediately in verse 25 by “the end of the world” (p. 42). So how could there be
a Jewish period of conversion between the “times of the Gentiles” and the end
of the world? JON offers no exegetical solution. But this does raise an
intriguing question. If the concept of an en
masse conversion of Jews so blatantly contradicts the chronology of Luke
21:24-25, where did this clumsy idea originate and how was it justified? The
answer lies in a not-so-glorious moment in our Catholic history. There was a
belief among the early Fathers (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Papias, Tertullian,
Origen, Lactantius) called premillennialism – the belief that, in accordance
with Apocalypse 20:1-6, Christ, at his Second Coming, would set up a kingdom on
earth for 1000 years in which the Jews would be converted en masse and reign on earth with him. In this way, Luke 21:24-25
presented no contradiction, since the en
masse conversion came after both the “time of the Gentiles” and the
Second Coming, and, in fact, actually made sense, since in this scenario the en masse conversion had the distinct
purpose of filling the earthly millennium with converted Jews. A dramatic shift
in eschatology arose, however, when Clement of Alexandria, Chrysostom,
Augustine and Jerome rejected premillennialism in favor of amillennialism – the
belief that the 1000 years of Apocalypse 20 was a symbolic number that referred
not to a Jewish period at the Second Coming but to the reign of the Catholic
Church beginning at the First Coming, and until the end of time. As such, the
passages in the Old Testament that prophesied a glorious future for “Israel” (e.g., Isa 66:9-14; Zech 12:1-9; Ezk
36:22-28) were reinterpreted by the amillennialists to be symbolic prophecies
about the Church age, not Israel. This dramatic shift became official as the
Council of Ephesus endorsed the amillennial view and said that the binding of
Satan (which, according to Apoc 20:1-3, happens at the beginning of the 1000
years) occurred at the cross, not in a future millennium.[v]
Many years later the premillennial view was also rejected by Pius XII as a
system that “cannot be taught safely.”[vi]

Incidentally, it
is quite interesting to see current Jewish converts to the Catholic faith (e.g., Roy Schoeman) attempting to
reintroduce a neo-premillennial view into Catholic eschatology, in which the
Old Testament prophecies of a future glory for “Israel” are being reinterpreted
as applying literally to the present nation of Israel and not to the Catholic
Church. Additionally, Schoeman claims that the “times of the Gentiles” ended in
1967 and the future glory and en masse
conversion of Jews has thus already started.[vii]

Back to our
story. When Augustine and the Council of Ephesus rejected premillennialism, a
curious problem arose. Although the amillennialists got rid of the future 1000
year Jewish period and turned it Catholic, somehow the premillennial baggage of
an en masse conversion of Jews hung
on for quite a while. This had a seriocomical twist to it. Based on a odd
mixture of Apocalypse 11 and the apocryphal literature they were reading at the
time,[viii]
the premillennial Fathers predicted that Elijah and Enoch would come back to
preach to the Jews at the Second Coming. So some of the amillennial Fathers
kept predicting the same return but without a millennium in which to put the
converts! Whereas premillennialism had room for an en masse conversion in its 1000-year paradise on earth, it wasn’t
so easy for amillennialism, due to the contradiction it created with Luke
21:24-25. To this day the problem persists, since the Catholic Church hasn’t
given much paper to eschatological concerns, except for brief, elementary and
somewhat confusing entries in the 1994 Catechism.[ix]
The solution, of course, is to drop the en
masse conversion, which is quite easy since Scripture doesn’t teach it. Of
course, if JON has to drop the en masse
conversion, he also has to drop the heretical idea that we are to cease
preaching the Gospel to the Jews.

So if neither
JON nor any other source can show that “all Israel” refers to a future
generation of Jews at Christ’s coming, then who is it? Well, there are a couple
of other possibilities that JON doesn’t consider. In the context St. Paul seems
to have already answered the question. In Rom 9:6 he stated that “not all
Israel are those who are descended from Israel,” and in the beginning of Romans
11:1-11 he says much the same as he speaks of a “remnant of Israel who is saved
by grace and the rest are hardened.” Hence, one possibility is that “all
Israel” consists of all the Jews who have been saved by grace, from their
inception in Abraham to the present day. In context, this makes perfect sense.
When the “fullness of the Gentiles” is reached, the fullness of the Jews, or
“all Israel,” is reached, and then Christ comes back for a full harvest. Notice
that this scenario requires we preach the Gospel to the Jews all the way up to
the Second coming of Christ, since there is a remnant of Jews God will save
until the end of time. And as Paul says in Rom 10:11-17: “faith comes by
hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ,” how are the Jews going to hear
unless we continue to preach to them?

Another similar
possibility, which was advanced in one of Augustine’s alternative views and
backed by Theodoret, is that “all Israel” refers to all the Gentiles and Jews
that are saved throughout the Church age, which Church age is also “the times
of the Gentiles.”[x] This
interpretation flows quite nicely from the particular Greek word Paul chose to
introduce the verse “and so all Israel will be saved.” The word “so” is
the Greek adverb οὕτως, which means “in this way” or “in this manner,” and acts
to tie together the two groups in verse 25, the remnant of Jews and the
fullness of Gentiles, who will thus form one entity of the “saved” (cf. Eph 2:13-22; Rom 9:22-24), combining
a spiritual Israel with the physical Israel into one body, “all Israel.”

So, in the end,
while we can certainly leave it as a remote possibility that Paul is teaching a
future conversion of Jews in Romans 11:25-27, it is by no means certain, and,
in fact, appears quite dubious. We can say this much for certain: no one in the
Catholic Church should be concluding that we should cease preaching the Gospel
to the Jews today based on the idea that God has plans to save their last
generation in the future. That position verges on heresy. No pope or theologian
wants to be caught dead saying so, for God’s judgment will be severe for anyone
who tampers with the Gospel.

MATTHEW 27:25: “HIS BLOOD BE UPON US AND OUR CHILDREN”

Now we will turn
to other issues in Jesus of Nazareth.
This next one also deals with the Jews, and it is quite serious. In his
interpretation of Mt 27:25 (“And the whole people said in reply, ‘His blood be
upon us and upon our children’”) JON seems to go out of its way to make this
passage say the exact opposite of what it says. The passage is very clear. It
says the “whole people” (which is literally and correctly translated from the
Greek πᾶς ὁ λαὸς). But, of course, if Cephas can be persuaded that what he is
seeing is not really what he is seeing, we then have the means by which “the
whole” can be made into a part. In other words, if one’s theology about the
Jews has been shaped by fifty years of brow-beating “dialogue” from which JON
succumbs to saying that there are now “two ways of rereading the biblical texts
– the Christian way and the Jewish way – into dialogue with one another” (p.
33);[xi]
in addition to receiving visits from Abe Foxman at the Vatican to help create
Judaized doctrine for Catholics; along with regular chastisements from Rabbi
Rosen; accompanied by annual visits to synagogues and prayers at the Wailing
Wall; along with twisted interpretations of Nostra
Aetate and the “Old Covenant is not revoked” from liberal Catholics, well,
it is almost inevitable that passages such as Mt 27:25 will somehow be
neutralized of their first century impact. So it should come as no surprise
that JON concludes: “Matthew is certainly not recounting historical fact here.”
Note well: JON knows precisely what Matthew is saying, but he rejects it as
incredible. JON’s excuse: “how could the whole people have been present at this
moment to clamor for Jesus’ death? …. The real group of accusers are the
current Temple authorities…” (p. 186). So Matthew, who we previously understood
from tradition was inspired by the Holy Spirit, somehow got it wrong. No
apologies. Yet the Gospel of John, which seems to be in agreement with Matthew
by his incessant repetition of the phrase “the Jews” in negative contexts,
somehow got it right, because, as JON insists, John didn’t actually mean all
the Jews but only “the Temple aristocracy.” We can easily see what JON is
trying desperately to do. He is willing to put the veracity of Matthew on the
chopping block and force John into a defined mold in order to arrive at a
position (which will inevitably placate today’s Jews) that the New Testament never
once implicates a single Jewish citizen for hating Jesus and wanting him
crucified, except for the Sanhedrin, the “Temple aristocracy.”

Will it stick?
Let’s see. First, JON doesn’t consider the possibility that Matthew’s “whole
people” refers to all of the Jews in the crowd at that particular time, not the
whole of Jerusalem. Second, he ignores other passages that implicate the Jewish
populace in addition to the Temple aristocracy. For example, Acts 3:14-17 says:
“But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be
granted to you [see Jn 19:15] and you killed the Author of life, whom God
raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses…. And now, brethren, I know that
you acted in ignorance,[xii]
as did also your rulers.” We see that the crowd gathered at Pentecost, who were
mostly Jews, are said to be guilty of murdering Jesus just as are their
“rulers” (the “Temple aristocracy”). Third, JON provides no evidence from the
Gospel of John that “the Jews” refers only to the Temple aristocracy. He does
no etiological study on the phrase (and this is especially egregious since “the
Jews” occurs 70 times in John); and he gives no contextual study of the Jewish
crowds that left Jesus in unbelief at various times in John’s Gospel. The irony
of JON’s dealing with Mt 27:25 is that later in his book he reacts strongly to
one of Adolf Harnack’s faulty interpretations by complaining: “But an exegesis
that turns a text into its opposite is no exegesis” (p. 165). But JON turned
“whole people” into its opposite – a very small part called the Temple
aristocracy, which appears to be an interpretation forced by his Jewish
ecumenism. To be sure, the issue here is not so much whether the Jewish people
of today are somehow responsible for the death of Christ, but more on how JON
twists the Scripture to arrive at his favored position.

But this
arbitrary treatment of Holy Scripture is only the symptom of an even larger
problem in the hermeneutics of JON. On what basis can an exegete declare that
one of the Gospel writers simply got his historical facts wrong? Isn’t Matthew
supposed to be writing by direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit who cannot lie?
Didn’t the Council of Trent, later confirmed by Leo XIII and Vatican I, teach
that “the Holy Scriptures … at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down
even to us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand” and thus “it is
absolutely wrong and forbidden … to admit that the sacred writer has erred”?[xiii]
The 1964 Pontifical Biblical Commission, when it was an authoritative arm of
the Church, said the same: “the Gospels were written under the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, who preserved their authors from every error.” Even Joseph
Ratzinger’s CDF said the same in 1998: “the absence of error in the inspired
sacred texts” (Professio Fidei). The
role of the Holy Spirit becomes an interesting question throughout the whole of
JON’s book, especially when we notice that not one time in its 300 pages does
JON state that what we have in the Gospels today was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
There is only one place where JON mentions the “guidance of God’s Spirit,” but
that is downplayed as merely a process of the evangelists gradually
“remembering” in their own mind what occurred in the life of Jesus (p. 137).
Conversely, there are numerous times that JON speaks about “strains of
tradition” that were the sources for the Gospel narratives, but never does JON
specify a supreme power that weaves all the strains together into a unified and
inerrant whole. There is a good reason for that: JON doesn’t believe the New
Testament is without error. Welcome to the world of Historical Criticism. But,
you say, it can’t be! How can a Catholic claim that the actual Gospel writer,
Matthew, made an error? Doesn’t JON believe in at least some kind of divine inspiration
of the biblical writers? He may, but the way around that is to claim, as
Historical Criticism does, that the Gospel we know as Matthew is actually a
redacted (i.e., edited) text created
by those who lived a generation or so after Matthew (JON, pp. 27, 127), and
that we can only guess as to what was original and what was redacted. And since
that generation had neither eyewitnesses to the words and acts of Jesus nor
were inspired by the Holy Spirit, then the history they redacted is often in
error.

Yet, by the same
token, we are also assured by these same “scholars” that even though all the
Gospels were redacted, somehow the salvation message in those same Gospels was
preserved from error! So says Fr. Raymond Brown (who is also cited in JON’s
book) and his cadre of liberal theologians who twisted Vatican II’s Dei Verbum 11’s innocuous phrase “for
the sake of our salvation”[xiv]
to mean: “Scripture teaching is truth without error to the extent that it
conforms to the salvific purpose of God” (New
Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 1169),[xv]
against all of Catholic tradition prior. So not only is scriptural inerrancy
limited to what Fr. Brown says is “salvific” (which is never defined by him or
his colleagues, allowing them license to question even the spiritual concepts
in the Gospels), they fail to explain how the salvific content can be preserved
error free but the historical content could be riddled with errors. And you
wonder why the Church is in such a mess? This kind of usurpation of Scripture
is precisely the reason that when Pope Pius XII allowed an investigation into
the merits of Historical Criticism in his 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, he did not do so without a resolute warning
to its practitioners not to take the criticism further than the Tradition would
allow. But the men of JON’s generation ignored that warning and went far beyond
it, to the point that we hardly know what true Scripture is any longer. JON’s
book is filled with instances in which the biblical writer’s account is called
into question, and JON is often tempted to pick the account that is in accord
with the ecumenical appeasement he wishes to promote – and we’ve already seen
that his ecumenical purpose is to exonerate the Jews to a status where they
don’t need to hear the Gospel and still retain an independent “mission from
God.” This is not biblical exegesis; it is biblical tyranny. It is not what our
tradition taught us. Tradition taught us that Scripture is inerrant in all that
it says; that the Gospels, like the Epistles, were written by eye witnesses
that were inspired [even “dictated” as Vatican I says] directly by the Holy
Spirit so as not to make any errors; and that the days of the Jews are over and
they no longer have a “mission from God” that is separate in any way from the
Church. Ironically, JON himself admits to some of the excesses of Historical
Criticism (e.g., pp. xiv, 82,
103-104) but it is too little too late and certainly not enough for JON to hold
the mirror up to his own face.

BAD COMPANY CORRUPTS GOOD MANNERS

We can usually
tell the path a biblical exegete is going down by the names he drops along the
way. In JON we see very few references to the Fathers and medieval theologians,
and none to the Councils, but we do see a whole showcase of modern biblical
scholars presented to us from the liberal and historical critical schools, many
of them Protestants, including the German Protestant and thorough-going liberal
Rudolph Bultmann, who seems to be one of JON’s favorites (e.g., p. 155: “As
Bultmann rightly observes …” although JON does take issue with him from time to
time, e.g., pp. 94-95; 213; 243). Although it is certainly true that
Bultmann is capable of giving us a valuable insight into a text of Scripture,
the fact is, Bultmann was an unbeliever who didn’t accept a word of the Bible
as true, much less something that could impinge on his personal life. Much like
the typical liberal scholars coming out of the Tübingen school in Germany during
his day, Bultmann treated the Bible like he would treat Shakespeare, Homer, or
any other piece of human literature. Bultmann’s trademark theological term was
“Kerygma,” which he claimed was the hidden divine truth behind what he believed
were the human myths in the Gospel narratives. In other words, the Gospels were
invented stories in order to promote a particular religious view. Bultmann and
his Tübingen colleagues used the same words we do (e.g., incarnation,
resurrection) but didn’t mean the same thing. Bultmann’s students took him to
heart. On one of his birthdays they gave him a beautifully bound book with the
title “Kerygma” on the front cover. But when Bultmann looked inside he saw only
empty pages. The students had a point. Bultmann’s hermeneutic had emptied the
Bible of its contents. But these destructive theological foundations
undergirding Bultmann and many of the other liberals who are quoted as
authorities in JON (e.g., Jeremias, Pesch, Gnilka, Schnackenburg) are
never revealed to the reader. Bultmann is quoted as if he’s just a modern
Augustine, and the reader is left with the impression that Bultmann is just as
great, or even greater than our Catholic Church Fathers or other great Catholic
doctors and saints. The Catholics JON quotes are all from the liberal ranks and
are impartial advocates of historical criticism. Fr. John P. Maier, professor
at Notre Dame (See Jones’ book: Is Notre Dame
Still Catholic?), the only
non-German quoted by the pope and one who is said to be aware of the “limitations
of historical criticism,” is the very source JON uses to support the idea that
the Gospel of John trumps the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark & Luke) since the
latter three made more mistakes (p. 112). Without the slightest bit of shame,
these theologians have no qualms in making the Gospels compete with one another
to see who among them can get away with false statements and exaggerations.
This is the sad state of biblical hermeneutics in the Catholic scholarly world
today and JON unabashedly perpetuates this sorry condition. The German
Protestants began the departure from an inerrant Bible back in the 1700 &
1800s and it spread like a disease all over the globe. Ever since the late
1940s Catholic exegetes not only imbibed the Protestant hermeneutic but surpassed
it. What took the Catholic Church 19 centuries to construct and teach under
such great believers in full inerrancy like Augustine, Thomas and Bellarmine,
and which was made official by the great councils, was destroyed in little more
than 25 years by Catholic liberals in the 20th century. Their
onslaught wouldn’t be half as bad except for the fact that there is not one
alternative voice (those who follow the Catholic tradition) quoted in JON to
even make it a fair fight.

THE ATONEMENT: IS IT PROTESTANT OR CATHOLIC?

Since many of
the sources JON cites are Protestant, it may come as no surprise that the
theory of the Atonement presented in JON is much closer to Protestant theology
than it is Catholic. This is an important point because allusions to the meaning
and application of the Atonement permeate JON. The first mention of the
Atonement appears on page 39 where JON translates the Greek word hilasterion with the word “expiation.”
This is the first indication of a departure from traditional Catholic theology
since the common Latin or English translation of hilasterion has always been “propitiationem” or “propitiation,” not
expiation. Technically, expiation refers to the result of the Atonement (i.e., men are cleansed of their sin and
attain righteousness with God), whereas propitiation refers to the cause or
reason the Atonement can be procured (i.e.,
God has been propitiated with the proper sacrifice and thus provides salvation
to man). Theologically, the two concepts are miles apart, since expiation claims
Christ absorbed our sin and guilt and was thus duly punished for them, whereas
propitiation says Christ absorbed no sin or guilt precisely so that he could
serve as an acceptable sinless sacrifice to appease the wrath of God.[xvi]
Hence, to describe what Christ actually did for the Father on the cross,
propitiation is the only correct term. As sad as it is, Catholic theologians,
influenced as they have been in ecumenism by Protestant theology, hardly talk
about propitiation any longer. The last one I found came from a book written by
theologian William Hogan in 1963.[xvii]

Expiation was
never used in Catholic theology until the 20th century, but now
appears prominently in the New American Bible. It was originally introduced by
Protestant Bibles (e.g., RSV) to demarcate
against the Catholic concept that the atonement was a sacrificial appeasement
of God the Father by God the Son. The Protestants wanted to reinforce the
Reformation concept of penal substitution, i.e.,
that Christ absorbed our sin and guilt, or actually became sin, and that God
punished him because of that sin and guilt, a position that JON embraces (pp.
39; 119-120; 155). Luther[xviii]
and Calvin,[xix] for
example, believed that Christ was punished with the equivalent of an eternity
in hell to pay the exact price for the sins of the elect that he took into
himself. This payment coincides with the Protestant concept of forensic
justification wherein the justified are imputed with Christ’s righteousness
because Christ paid the exact legal price required for sin. Traditional
Catholic theology has never taught either a forensic atonement or a forensic
justification. Both were rejected at the Council of Trent. From the Fathers
through the medievals the atonement has always been understood as a voluntary
propitiation through sacrifice in order to appease the Father so that he will
personally, not legally, move to save mankind. This is why the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia says: “... The
second mistake is the tendency to treat the Passion of Christ as being
literally a case of vicarious punishment. This is at best a distorted view of
the truth that His atoning Sacrifice took the place of our punishment, and that
He took upon Himself the sufferings and death that were due to our sins.”[xx]
“... Redemption has reference to both God and man. On God’s part, it is the
acceptation of satisfactory amends whereby the Divine honor is repaired and the
Divine wrath appeased.”[xxi]
Thus we find in Augustine: “But what
is meant by ‘justified in His blood’? ... Was it indeed so, that when God the Father
was wroth with us, He saw the death of His Son for us, and was appeased towards
us? Was then His Son already so far appeased towards us, that He even deigned
to die for us; while the Father was still so far wroth, that except His Son
died for us, He would not be appeased?”[xxii]
And the same in Thomas: “... the
passion of Christ is the cause of our reconciliation with God … through its
being a sacrifice most acceptable unto God, for this is properly the effect of
a sacrifice that through it God is appeased, as even man is ready to forgive an
injury done unto him by accepting a gift which is offered to him ... And so in
the same way, what Christ suffered was so great a good that, on account of that
good found in human nature, God has been appeased over all the offenses of
mankind.”[xxiii]

Although JON is
not as extreme as Luther and Calvin’s putting Christ in the literal torments of
hell, he comes close to the concept, and for the same reasons. For example, on
page 155 JON describes Christ’s suffering as one “before the abyss of the full
power of destruction, evil, and enmity with God that is now unleashed upon him,
that he now takes directly upon himself, or rather into himself, to the point
that he is ‘made to be sin’ (cf. 2 Cor 5:21).” But it was Luther who first insisted on using 2 Cor 5:21 to establish the
idea, in direct opposition to Catholic theology, that Christ was made sin and
guilt and that God’s “enmity” was against Christ because of that sin and guilt.
Luther writes: “And all the prophets saw this, that Christ was to become the
greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc.,
there has ever been anywhere in the world. ... In short, he has and bears all
the sins of all men in his body.”[xxiv]
The extent of his belief is noted here: “Whatever sins I, you, and all of us
have committed or may commit in the future, they are as much Christ’s own as if
he himself had committed them. In short, our sin must be Christ’s own sin, or
we shall perish eternally.”[xxv]John Calvin believed the same.
Regarding 2 Cor. 5:21 and Is 53:6 he wrote: “... That is, he who was about to
cleanse the filth of those iniquities was covered with them by transferred
imputation.”[xxvi]
Conversely, Augustine and Aquinas show the authentic Catholic interpretation of
2 Cor. 5:21, and it is miles apart from Luther and Calvin. Augustine states: “Those who know the Scriptures of the Old
Testament will approve of what I say. For not once but very often ‘sins’ there
are called ‘sacrifices for sins.’”[xxvii]Aquinas writes: “God made him to be
‘sin,’ that is, he made him suffer for sin, when he was offered up for our
sins.”[xxviii]
This interpretation was held by the Fathers in consensus, beginning with Justin
Martyr and Irenaeus, through Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, Cyril of
Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nanzianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John
Chrysostom, Ambrose, et al., and
through the Middle Ages.

Additionally, it
was precisely because of the Catholic understanding of a propitiatory Atonement
that Luther despised and rejected the Catholic Mass, which is a daily
reenactment of the cross on the altar. Concerning the Mass, in 1555 the Council of Trent stated: “The holy
Council teaches that this sacrifice is
truly propitiatory, so that, if we draw near to God with an upright heart
and true faith, with fear and reverence, with sorrow and repentance, through it
‘we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’ For the Lord, appeased by this oblation, grants grace
and the gift of repentance, and he pardons wrong-doings and sins, even grave
ones.” Augustine said the same: “He
who devoutly hears Holy Mass will receive a great vigor to enable him to resist
mortal sin, and there shall be pardoned to him all venial sins which he may
have committed up to that hour.” Since Luther
had no room for propitiation in his forensic theology, he obviously had no room
for the Catholic cross or the Catholic mass. He writes: “He who sacrifices
wants to appease God. But he who wants to appease God regards him as wrathful
and merciless; and he who does so does not expect grace or mercy of Him, but is
afraid of His judgment and condemnation.”[xxix]
He continues: “you see how all words contradict the notion that the Mass is a
sacrifice given to God, and rather show that it is a mercy and gift of God
given to men.”[xxx] If this is
not the case, Luther says, “do we not become unsure as to whether our sacrifice
is acceptable to God?”[xxxi]
Basing his critique of the Catholic Mass on his exposition of Hebrews, Luther
concludes: “it is certain that Christ cannot be sacrificed over and above the
one single time when He sacrificed Himself.”[xxxii]

Unfortunately,
for as many times as JON touches on the Atonement (pp. 39, 119, 133, 155-56,
164, 172-173; 209, 229-231) he never gets around to telling us exactly how
Christ’s suffering and death procured it. The words “propitiation,”
“appeasement” and “satisfaction” (all traditional Catholic nomenclature to
describe the atonement) simply do not appear in JON, although Protestant
concepts like “vicarious atonement” appear quite often (e.g., p. 172) – the
very concept the Catholic encyclopedia said was “at best a distorted view.” I
think this is because JON either has no concept of the traditional Catholic
teaching or that he has been so influenced by German Protestant thought that he
now only thinks in terms of vicarious expiation. When, for example, JON covers
Isaiah 53:11 on page 173 he has the perfect opportunity to highlight the
Catholic concept of propitiation, since Isaiah says: “he [God] shall see the
fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied” (RSV).[xxxiii]
Instead JON skips to the second part of the verse that speaks of the resulting
expiation (“he shall make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear
their iniquities”).

Along these same
lines, JON also misconstrues the account in Exodus 32 when the Israelites
sinned by worshiping the golden calf for which God was ready to destroy them
save for the propitiation by Moses (Ex 32:9-14). Instead, of a propitiation,
JON pictures Moses as a “vicarious atonement.” But God neither asked Moses to
take the sin of Israel upon himself nor asked him to vicariously suffer or die
for it. Rather, Exodus 33:11-19 tells us that God accepted Moses’ propitiatory
pleas because Moses was a righteous man who was “God’s friend” and with whom he
“spoke face to face.” Even when God had decided not to go through the desert
with the Israelites, Moses’ pleas persuade God to change his mind (Ex 33:1-5).
Moses could do so because of his righteousness and personal relationship with
God that he had built up over 80 years, not because he vicariously suffered for
Israel. Unfortunately, JON misses all this. Instead, he cites Gerhard von Rad
(another liberal Protestant theologian) to claim that at another time Moses
“was vicariously suffering for Israel and likewise dying outside the Holy Land
for Israel” (p. 173), but obviously JON missed the fact that Moses’ exclusion
from the Holy Land was due to his own sin in striking the rock twice, not as a
vicarious suffering for the Jews so that they could enter the Holy Land (cf. Num. 20:12; 27:14; Dt 32:51).

THINGS I LIKED IN JON

I was impressed
with JON’s treatment in Chapter 3 of Jesus’ washing of the apostles’ feet. When
Jesus says: “He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet,” JON
shows quite well that they are analogies to the sacraments of Baptism and
Confession. The first washing takes away Original Sin, and thus there is no
need to repeat that action; while the washing of the feet refers to our sins
committed subsequent to Baptism that need to be forgiven in order for us to
stay in the Lord’s graces. I also liked JON’s treatment of Jesus’ two natures
and two wills and their relationship to the Trinity. It was one of the better
treatments of this difficult subject I have read in my theological career. I
also liked the typology JON often used. For example, JON’s treatment of the
wedding feast of Cana and the relationship between Eve and Mary; and his
treatment of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane being a type of the Garden of
Eden where the two Adams do their bidding, were excellent. Finally, I
especially liked JON’s treatment of the Passover issue in dealing with the
apparent contradictions between John and the Synoptics. JON poses the best
solution I’ve seen, that is, that the Synoptics are not speaking of the Last
Supper as a Passover meal. I myself have shown in various papers that the words
chosen in the Synoptics are not those of a Passover meal. For example, the
Synoptics do not use the word for unleavened bread (ἄζυμος) but use the Greek
word for leavened bread (ἄρτος).[xxxiv]
JON shows that at the Last Supper Jesus is departing from the traditional Seder
meal and beginning the New Covenant with a new type of meal (which also means that
those Catholics today who are practicing Seder meals during Good Friday in
commemoration of the Jewish Passover are in error). Whatever the correct
solution, I was happy to see that JON did not resort to the historical critical
approach of saying that either the Synoptics or John somehow got their
historical facts wrong about the Last Supper.

All in all I
have been rather critical of JON, but I make no apologies since the material
covered by JON deals with some of the most important issues in both theology
and society today. There are a few other theological points I could delve into
that I believe JON has mishandled. All I can say is, if JON wishes to
perpetuate the idea that the Gospels contain mistakes and he promotes
Protestant and Jewish theological ideas in place of Catholic tradition, then it
forces us to show that he himself has erred. The only way JON can match the
infallibility of the Scriptures is when JON speaks infallibly from his papal
chair. Everything else, as JON said himself, is open to criticism. We can only
pray that whether its Joseph Ratzinger or Pope Benedict XVI, neither will fall
prey to the errors and heresies that are so prevalent today, especially
regarding the place of the Jewish people in the plan of God.

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[xi]
This may, perhaps, be the same reason why Cardinal Ratzinger had no problem
approving the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 2002 document “The Jewish People
and the Holy Scriptures” which said: “The Jewish Messianic wait is not in
vain…the Jews are waiting for the first coming, the Christians the second.”

[xii]
The phrase “acted out of ignorance” (κατά ἄγνοιαν) does not mean that the
people are guiltless for putting Christ to death. The distinction between
“acting in ignorance” and “acting in full knowledge” comes from the Mosaic Law.
Num 15:27-29 shows that there are sins for which sacrifices can be made. But
Num 15:30-31 shows that there are other sins for which the sinner is simply cut
off without any forgiveness. Lev 4:27 shows that after the person who acted in
ignorance finds out about his sin, he must offer a sacrifice for a “sin
offering.” Hebrews 9:7 shows how important this distinction is. It shows that
“acting in ignorance” was the common sin in Israel, so much so that, on the Day
of Atonement, it was only the sins of ignorance that were atoned: “but the
second tent is entered only once a year, and then only by the high priest who
takes in the blood to make an offering for his own and the people's faults of
inadvertence.” (Heb 9:7 NJB). The phrase “faults of inadvertence” is
the Greek ἀγνοημάτων, which is literally “ignorances,” and comes from the same
Greek word ἄγνοιαν used in Acts 3:17. The corollary would also be true, that
is, if the people who sinned in “ignorance” were then made to realize that what
they did was sinful (as Peter did to the Jews in Acts 3:13-15), and if these
same people chose not to repent of their sin (as Peter commanded them to do in
Acts 3:19: “Repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away…”),
then they would move out of the “ignorance” category and be “cut off,” as the
person in Num 15:30-31 was “cut off” if they had sinned intentionally.

[xiii]Denz. 783; 1941-1953; and Vatican
I: “Further, this supernatural revelation...is contained in the written
books...from the apostles themselves by the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and
have been transmitted as it were from hand to hand” (Denz. 3006).

[xiv] “Since, therefore, all that the inspired
authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy
Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and
without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation,
wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures” (Dei Verbum 11, Flannery edition).

[xv] Edited by Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A.
Fitzmyer and Roland E. Murphy, Prentice Hall, NJ, 1968, 1990. The context of
Dei Verbum says the opposite, as well as do the five footnotes in the original
Dei Verbum edition, but Brown ignores them, as do all other liberal Catholic
scholars with the same agenda.

[xvi] “In discussing reconciliation and
atonement it has become customary to draw a distinction between propitiation
and expiation. In propitiation the action is directed towards God or some other
offended person. The underlying purpose is to change God’s attitude from one of
wrath to one of good-will and favour. In the case of expiation, on the other
hand, the action is directed towards that which has caused the breakdown in the
relationship. It is sometimes held that, while God is not personally angry with
the sinner, the act of sin has initiated a train of events which can only be
broken by some compensatory rite or act of reparation for the offence. In short
propitiation is directed towards the offended person, whereas expiation is
concerned with nullifying the offensive act.” (From the Protestant: Dictionary of New Testament Theology,
ed. Colin Brown, Vol. 3, p. 151). See my book: Not By Bread Alone, Appendix 2: A Study of Propitiation and
Expiation, Queenship Pub. 2000.

[xvii] “It should be kept clear that Christ did
not assume the guilt of sin, but the obligation of making satisfaction for the
sins of all men...Christ remained free of all guilt, and that He was always
loved by His Father. Christ assumed the responsibility of making satisfaction
for the sins of men but not the guilt of their sins. He freely undertook to
give to the Father something that was more pleasing than the sins of men had
been hateful. He also took the responsibility of discharging the penalties due
to men’s sins. This does not mean that Christ was punished in man’s stead. He
freely accepted, out of love and obedience, sufferings by which He freed men
from the burden of suffering the penalty of eternal damnation” (Christ’s Redemptive Sacrifice, pp. 43,
81).

[xxxiii] There is a textual variant in the Hebrew
text at Is 53:11 and thus some translations (e.g., NAB) will not have this
exact wording.

[xxxiv] John 13:29 suggests that the Last Supper
was not a Passover meal, since, after the Apostles had already celebrated the
Last Supper, they later thought Judas was leaving in order to buy things for
the upcoming Passover. As such, the closest the Last Supper could be is the
Preparation for Passover, but not the Passover (which came the day after), and
therefore it could not be a Seder meal. Second, the Seder meal employs only
unleavened bread, but the Last Supper used leavened bread. The Greek for unleavened
bread is ἄζυμος, which corresponds to the Hebrew הצמ (where we get the English phrase “matzot
bread”). We can see the correspondence between the two words in the LXX (e.g., Ex 12:18; 23:15; Lv 23:6). But the
Greek for leavened bread is ἄρτος, and the Hebrew equivalent is םחל, and this correspondence also appears in
the LXX (e.g., Lv 23:17). The
importance of the distinction is this: in the passages of the New Testament
that describe the Last Supper, in each case, the Greek word ἄρτος (leavened
bread) is used, never ἄζυμος (unleavened bread) (e.g., Mt 26:26; Mk 143:22; Lk 22:19; 1Co 11:23-28). This must be
distinguished from “the feast of Unleavened Bread” that is referred to in Mt
26:17; Mk 14:1, 12; Lk 22:1, 7. In each of these verses, the Greek word ἄζυμος
is used for the word “Unleavened.” These distinctions are important
considerations because, without the use of unleavened bread, there was little
resembling a Passover celebration, and thus it would be difficult to make a
one-to-one correspondence between the Last Supper and a Seder meal. Moreover,
in the passages of the New Testament that contain a description of the Last
Supper, there is a necessary distinction that is often missed between the
Passover Preparation Day (Thursday, Nisan 14) and the actual Passover Day
(Friday, Nisan 15), but various translations fail to make the distinction. The
importance of this distinction is that the Preparation day was not the Passover
day, no more than Christmas eve is Christmas day.